The "Right Way" to Grieve

There’s no “right” way to grieve a loss—not of a job, not of a home, not of the beloved oak tree in your yard, not of a friendship that sputters and dies, not of a pet, and not of the death of someone you love.

(All of these losses are important to recognize as such. Grief is not confined to the sphere of death. What follows below, however, is in regards to death of a loved human being.)

Western society places a lot of emphasis on cultural expectation, in pretty much every area of our lives. We are exhorted to dress a certain way, wear our hair, speak, and exhibit approved behaviors to be in conformance to our gender. For example: “That’s not ladylike,” “Boys don’t cry!”, Men don’t like women with short hair,” “Masculinity means always being strong,” etc.

These statements come from centuries of conditioning and enculturation, and while individuals are (at least, as of now) free to buck them, there is no escaping these tropes’ influence upon our culture. This influence is quite apparent in the biases we have towards people who dare to dress, behave, and speak in ways that are “contrary” to the roles we have been taught belong to us.

And when we experience the death of a loved one, the culture is quick to assert itself boldly and guilt us into grieving in a particular way. In America, we are expected to “move on” within a succession of stages (I call them windows¹):

The initial window is the first 72 hours after the death. Most employed people have the luxury² of three (usually paid) days of Bereavement Leave in which we are to attend to the immediate logistics of notifying everyone, planning for a funeral and disposition, closing accounts, making arrangements for dependents’ care, and possible travel—all while navigating the intense soup of emotions that arise after a loved one dies.

Seventy-two hours. Three days. That amount of time is deemed sufficient for attending to everything needed after a death.

Spoiler alert: it is NOT enough time.

The second window starts at the end of the first. Employed folk are expected to return to the duties of their jobs. Sure, everyone at the office expects to have to walk on eggshells around you for a bit, and most will treat you tenderly (if not avoid you whenever possible so as not to be infected by your sadness). But you are expected to perform the duties for which you are being paid. Back to work!

This window has a less-defined time period. It’s anywhere from a week to a month, usually. You are expected to function at work at your usual brisk level by the end of the first week following the death. You are given a little bit of slack for your emotional state, which is still expected to be fragile, but meetings, deadlines, and work duties are not to be neglected.

Outside of work, this window is more forgiving. People are still checking on you regularly, even bringing food or helping with chores and errands. They are, at this stage, quite helpful and magnanimous with their time. Their attempts at comforting you may not suit you, but they mean well and, let’s face it, you benefit. This window holds the rawness, still, and more emotions are about to come move in with it.

Once this window with its nebulous end-time is over, the third window begins.

The third window begins without fanfare. Work is back to “normal.” Period. Where your coworkers gave you a decent amount of latitude in Window 2 if they caught you bawling in the bathroom or having a lash-out at some seemingly minor thing, once Window 3 begins, those incidents will start to work against you. You are expected to have moved on. The workplace (and the public square) leaves very little room now for emotions (and the behaviors that often stem from them) that don’t belong within its walls.

On the personal front, true friends remain helpful and at your service, both physically and emotionally. The rest start pulling back and moving on with their lives³. Acquaintances tend to avoid you if you aren’t behaving in a way that says you are trying to “get past this.” They are the ones who meet each other in passing and cluck their tongues at what an awful tragedy you suffered, but have no real patience to “deal with your sadness” right now.

Here's the thing, though. You are still raw, and reeling. Even if you do not believe this (because you, too, have bought into the culturally-mandated timeline of How Long Grief Should Last), your emotions betray you. The culture demands that we suppress our feelings of loss past a certain time, but everyone grieves differently and feelings aren’t on some stupid timeline.

A story: I took care of my aging mother on a regular basis a year or so before she passed semi-unexpectedly in 2019. She lived alone and could mostly care for herself with a little outside help, but once a week after work, I went to her grocery store and bought the items she needed, then I came to her place and cooked and ate with her, gave her a much-needed bath, spent the night, made her an absolutely necessary pot of coffee the next day, and did things like caring for her toenails, cleaning and stocking the kitchen, organizing her pills for the week, taking her to doctor visits as needed, and enjoying her company. It was a ritual we both looked forward to.

After her death, I still passed her street every Thursday on the way home, and I cried, uncontrollably. I’m really glad I didn’t need to go into her store, because I could not do it. The thought of walking down those aisles just gutted me. (I didn’t return to that particular store for 2 years, in fact.) One day during Stage 3, I was at my grocery store near my house (same chain) and when I walked down the coffee aisle, I lost it. The smell hit me and I broke down, bawling, crumpling to the floor. People looked at me either with pity or distrust as they passed, but I bucked the cultural expectation⁴ and just let it all out in that store.

Window 3 is the classic rendering of cultural expectation slamming up against the reality of grief: it doesn’t follow a linear path, it doesn’t give a damn about culturally-expected timelines, and it will barrel down on you when you least expect it and knock you to the ground, breathless and heartbroken.

And this is all completely normal. 

You are not broken if you get triggered by the sudden smell of coffee days, weeks, months, or even years after the loss; you are not broken if you collapse right where you happen to be in that moment; you are not broken if you haven’t “moved on” in a specific window of time.

Buck the expectations—all of them, including the gender-specific ones—and feel/express your feelings, as much as is possible, when they hit, without suppressing them. If you have the privilege of being able to take more time off work, do so. (Yes, I know being at work helps distract you from the loss, but you will be better off in the long run if you do not seek out distractions right now.⁵) Routines are way more effective than distractions.

There is not one way, nor a “right way,” to grieve.

You've got this.

 

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1.)        So as not to confuse them with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief, meant to describe what the dying person herself—not her grieving survivors--goes through. Also, my “windows theory” is mainly about what society expects from us, which often differs from what people actually feel and experience

 

2.)        It’s not a luxury—that’s the irony

 

3.)        Which is expected, culturally speaking, but it can still leave you bereft and lonely

 

4.)        That expectation being that tears of that magnitude, and any sort of wailing, are to be expressed in private, never in public. Public grief makes people really uncomfortable, doesn’t it?

 

5.)        The science supports this; it’s not wallowing, it’s dealing.